Lung cancer accounts for the majority of cancer-related deaths, globally, with more men affected than women [1]. While smoking is known to be the strongest risk factor for lung cancer, accounting for over 85% of all lung cancer cases, studies suggests other factors including environmental factors (e.g., air quality) also play an important role. Using the Gapminder dataset from the Gapminder Foundation https://www.gapminder.org/data/, these data show that China had the highest total new lung cases (504 000 - 576 000) in men over the 5-year period between 2015 to 2019. Other countries including the United States, Japan, and India also had some of the highest lung cancer incidence, ranging from 61 300 to 138 000. Expectedly, due to high incidence of new cases in countries like China, Japan, and Russia, the Asian continent accounted for the highest new lung cases in men.

Rising global CO2 emissions are causing an increase in the amount of atmospheric C02 resulting in decreased air quality, global warming, and consequentially, climate change and climate-related health conditions. This analysis of data from the Gapminder Foundation are in-line with current literature as we observe an increase in C02 emissions from 2015 to 2019, with China being the biggest contributor in Asia and globally. The majority of countries in the African continent contribute the lowest C02 emissions (defined as <100 tonnes - in this analysis) to the global amount, while Asia has more countries (n=3) with high (defined as >1000 tonnes - in this analysis) C02 emissions.

In this analysis we observed a linear relationship between new lung cancer cases in men and total C02 emissions suggesting a role for C02 emissions and air quality in the increasing incidence of lunng cancer. Although smoke is known to be strongest risk factor for lung cancer, a recent study has reported that lung cancer diagnoses are increasing among never-smokers, with air quality cited as a significant contributor [3]. Further studies are warranted to determine the relationship between air qulaity, C02 emissions and lung cancer incidence.